Thought of the day...

When was the last time we were thankful to God for the fact that we were born here in a peaceful country called Malaysia where there's no war and genocides?

WORLD WAR 2

The prisoners of Auschwitz Camp

Many of us thought that only Jews were killed at this notorious camp by Hitler and his followers. Actually, there were also Christians and other religions (based on what I've read), with some of them being the Roma and Sintis'. They're more commonly known as Gypsies.

The Food they ate

Breakfast

- Half litre of 'coffee', which doesn't taste like the coffee we drank. It was more like a dark coloured water.

- 1 litre of vegetable soup (often made from rotten cabbages and other veggies) these often has worms in it which 'floats' on top of the soup.

Supper

- 300g of black bread (about a third of a modern loaf), 30g (1 oz) of margarine, 20g of sausage (equivalent to a quarter of one modern thick sausage) and some more 'coffee'.

The black bread tasted like a lump of dirt and mashed newspapers.

The prisoners lived in appalling conditions. Some had to sleep on straw on the floor. Later, wooden bunks (the prisoners slept five to a bed) and straw mattresses were introduced. They shared a few dirty pieces of blanket. All of them got terribly bitten by the bugs and they had scabies.

They had to do hard labour work at the camp such as carrying heavy rocks and stuffs. For people doing such hard physical labour , the food they had were starvation rations.

Here are some testimonials of the Auschwitz survivors

"We had to stand in line to get our daily bread along with our coffee. The bread was around 200 grams and black...We were given a small aluminum bowl where they poured our coffee into and a large spoon to drink the coffee with. Along with our bread, they gave us a small cube of margarine. The bowl and spoon were our one and only worldly possessions...We had to take our eating utensils with us because we needed them at lunchtime when it was served at the work site. The soup they served us was utterly digusting. It was a cabbage soup and floating on top were worms. We had a difficult time eating it...”

Some brave ones managed to eat more or at least a good food a day such as those assigned to peel vegetables, where they would quickly grab a carrot, turnips or anything reachable and put it in their pocket.

For more, read "A Life of Hope, Memoirs of Nadia the Survivor" by Peter Anton, ISBN 0-9736966-0-5

“The food was some kind of feed, called soup, a dark, watery liquid, for which one had again to stand in line in order to get some of it into a small tin bowl - not even full. Within a couple of weeks we all became thin, numb and listless, just as those who had been before us in Auschwitz. Our camp was called Birkenau. B 2 B. Block 12.

My prayer goes today to the women and children who have suffered the consequences of the second world war, and I also pray to God to bring peace on earth for our future generation.